It’s been common for years to send and receive gifts via email, and start-up Giiv.com is taking that one step further, betting that people will want to receive gifts via text message.

The company, which will announce $3.35 million in Series A funding on Tuesday, allows users to select from a small group of retailers, such as Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Exhale spas, and send a gift code via text message to any mobile-phone number.

Giiv is one of a crop of businesses aiming to tie mobile phones to commerce. Mobile coupons are becoming increasingly popular among customers and retailers. Location-based services like Foursquare allow businesses to offer rewards to customers, and several start-ups are rolling out devices that allow credit cards to be scanned via smart phones. Earlier this year, movie-ticket company Fandango introduced an iPhone application that allows for paperless tickets by displaying a scannable bar code on the phone’s screen.

The idea for Giiv.com came after Giiv founder and CEO Michelle Crames traveled to South Korea in early 2009 and saw a service called Gifticon, which is run by Korean mobile company SK Telecom and offers text-based gifts of everything from music to fast-food meals and Starbucks. “Last year they handled 3.9 million items … but no one here [in the U.S.] was doing it,” she said in an interview with Digits.

The process of sending gifts through text has been popular in South Korea for a couple of years, and SK Telecom Ventures — the U.S.-based investing arm SK Telecom — is one of Giiv’s early investors, which also include with TomorrowVentures, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s venture-capital firm.

Sending gifts via text message offers a feeling of “instant gratification” to the sender and the person receiving the gift, Ms Crames said. “A lot of emails aren’t opened or aren’t opened immediately, but you know a text is going to get to someone immediately,” she said. Senders can select gifts from the Giiv site, and the service also offers an iPhone application. Items range from $5.99 to more than $200, including a 99-cent service charge. Giiv allows recipients to use the mobile gift code right away, and the code is accessible as long as they have the text. Users also can return to the Giiv website and retrieve their code using their phone number, if they delete the text message.

Giiv plans to use its latest funding to help expand its services to new retailers and products. Currently, its site offers gifts from fewer than 15 retailers, and not everything is integrated well. For example, customers who receive a Macy’s gift card via text and want to redeem it at a store have to first use the code to buy an e-gift card online and then print out the bar code from that card and bring it to the store, according to the instructions on Giiv.com.

Ms. Crames said Giiv is looking to include “microgifts,” items like drinks and snacks that cost only a couple of dollars each and have been extremely popular in the Korean service. To do that with large companies it will need to coordinate with franchises that often have different prices depending on the location. “We’re still in the investing phase,” she said. “There is still a lot of experimenting with scanners and mobile couponing … but it’s great timing for this all to come together.”